when the chatterbox strikes (a novel by the moonlighter, hehe)

the trip to the dentist was supposedly benign. my regular prophylaxis was 2 months overdue. even so, there could not have been much trouble, i thought. i am a perpetual toothbrush and mouthwash aficionado anyway, a borderline toothbrushing-freak you might say. (yes, i carry around a toothbrush just about anywhere i go, and use it every after meals, even in my sleep, haha kidding.)

after prophylaxis, the dentist found all my teeth healthy (all previous dental fillings were okay) save for three adjacent problem areas. one tooth had its dental filling coming off, while the other tooth chipped off, because of wear and tear (i do not grind stones with my teeth if you were wondering; i am just a hardcore carnivore), and partly because of the third problem -- an impacted third molar crowding the rest of the teeth on the left lower jaw. (i have postponed the extraction of this tooth for several reasons i will no longer bother you with.) she also said the problem tooth had a thin enamel layer.

she light cured the dental filling of one tooth. one problem solved. the second one, she needed to "cap" the tooth already. tearing down the old dental filling and doing it over would reduce the tooth to a "dental filling with tooth remnants" and not a tooth with dental filling. she would have to place a porcelain cap over the crown of the tooth which was more expensive. in this case, i believe the expense would be more practical. it would end up with a cap in the long run anyway.

i agreed to the procedure. that is just number two problem solved. minor surgery for the extraction of the third problem still had to be scheduled for october (less stress means better chances of winning, hehe, the dentist thought it would be best to have the extraction when i am 100% stress-free). i already had one of my wisdom teeth (also impacted, with clipped roots to boot) extracted last year (if only wisdom teeth made me wiser, i got four of them). i ended up looking like this the first time (good thing we found a new dentist).


in preparation for the "capping" , she had to perform the standard drilling to restore the chipped tooth. in anticipation (and perhaps because of fear) of pain and getting hurt, i agreed to local anesthesia. i was given two shots, one was to block the main nerve surrounding the tooth and another for reinforcement. in the middle of the procedure i remembered the cinemanila film we saw with great disappointment (hehe), "syndromes and a century", whose scenes in the dental clinic (over the years) are the only ones i can now recall.

the effect was not immediate, but when it took effect, it was weird. it wasn't totally devoid of sensation because it felt swollen, only, i could not feel the pain of the drilling. it wasn't as if it was my first time being under the influence (of anesthesia), but probably because of my renewed sense of being (haha) and my efforts to put things in its proper perspective after being disheveled for quite some time, i started to think about a lot of things.

now that was a "brief" intro, haha.

• when you get hurt or experience pain in anyway, a memory of the pain is immediately created. then you increase the fear of the pain because of your anticipation that something can actually hurt you.
• but then, there is anesthesia. you can choose to momentarily desensitize yourself, but when it fades, the pain remains, until the cause of the pain is put away altogether. in the end, you just have to deal with it.
  
• with the anesthesia localized on left side of my oral cavity, i made this little experiment: drinking a glass of cold water. as i felt the cold water through my mouth, down to my throat, the left side felt warm, it was like simultaneously drinking warm and cold water but the water seemed to have suddenly lost its kinetic energy to mix the warm and cold. sometimes, the absence of something, heightens our understanding and appreciation of the other things we actually have, in this case, we learn to appreciate warmth and coldness because we have experienced both.
• in order for some things to be restored and made new, they first have to be broken, much like the tooth drilled through to make way for the dental fillings.

so much for an afternoon with the dentist.

if you read this far, congratulations!

i felt i needed to write this. there are things which just need to be done, regardless of whether anyone listens, much less whether or not anyone cares.

this is one of those things.

and i couldn't deny how good it feels, even after the anesthesia wears off and i'd have to be under the influence of pain killers again.